Comrade Nikolayev!

Having examined your materials and consulted with comrade Stalin, who has also examined them, I request that you provide me with the following additional information:

1) Particulars about all three of your candidates for membership on the commission, namely:
(a) the position of each of them;
(b) their technical experience (radio work or merely knowledge of electrical engineering; their years of service);

(c) are they Communists? if yes, since when? if no, then your assessment of the extent to which they can be trusted?

2) Did you give Botin the assignment to reproduce the Tiflis experiment? if not, what exactly was the other assignment? if yes, was it given orally or in writing? immediately or later, and when exactly?

3) Did Botin tell you precisely that he theoretically cannot explain or formulate his invention, but stumbled upon it by chance? (I request that you set forth his statement on this matter more precisely—the one you reported to me about.)

4) What sums? By whom and when were funds allocated to Botin for expenses? From what sources?

From the funds of the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory or from others?

5) On what basis could the "commissar of the Moscow powerful radio station of undamped oscillations" (surname unclear) speak of 500,000 rubles? (his document from 28. IX. 1920)

6/X. Lenin

P. S. Please be so kind as to answer on this same sheet and return it to me.343

Written October 6, 1920

Published for the first time from the manuscript